How to Geek Yourself up From Scratch

It seems like learning how to code is pretty much the fad this year. I've spoken about how important it is to learn code last year during Campaign's War of the Words. You can read my speech here and why I think coding is essential here. I've also had a bunch of people asking me where to learn how to code. At the time, I didn't really know any reliable beginner's online source but as I try to get into the details of how to fulfil my New Year's Resolution of learning how to code, I've come across two resources that seem friendly to beginners.

Code Year (www.codeyear.com) is all about teaching beginners how to code this year because they claim that it's not too late to learn how to code. When you sign up, they send out an email every week containing that week's lesson on Codecademy. If you're just signing up now, they will send you an email containing the lessons which have gone out in the previous weeks so that you don't miss a thing. This is ideal for learners who want a semi-structured lesson plan. Since the lessons come out every week, you'd digest the material at a reasonable pace whilst still having the luxury of deciding the exact time you want to do them during the week. Of course, all that material is found on Codecademy, which you can also digest at your own pace.

Comp Sci 101 is a free online class taught by Stanford professor, Nick Parlante, which apparently already has over 50K sign-ups (including mine). CS101 will teach the essential ideas of computer science for a 'zero-prior-experience' audience. This class promises to let students experiment with little bits of code so that they will be able to what's behind the computer screen to life. This class starts in February and I can't wait to start.

If you know of any more beginner's resources on learning how to code, feel free to Tweet me at @jamietolentino. I'd be interested to try it out and get my geek on.